Have You Played… Body Blows?

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Have You Played? is an endless stream of game recommendations. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.

I have a soft spot for slightly shoddy, me-too games from the early ’90s. The three or four football games that all tried desperately to ape Sensible Soccer after its success, for example. Or, in this case, Body Blows’ attempt to mimic the success of Street Fighter II. I played it originally on the Amiga but it was also available on DOS, and in my memories, it was charmingly rubbish.

Instead of Ken and Ryu, you had Nik and Dan, the latter of which could throw balls of fire. Instead of Zangief, you had Kossak, who had a ponytail instead of a mohawk. Not all of the fighters were inspired directly by Street Fighter, of course: spoilers for this 22 year-old game, but defeating the last fighter Max would reveal him to be a robot called ‘T17’, after Terminator and the game’s developer, Team 17.

My pointing out these similarities aren’t criticisms – or at least, not strong ones. I was around eight years-old when I played Body Blows and I didn’t mind one bit that it felt a little like unofficial Frozen merchandise does now. It was fun, it was a little bit like another game I liked, and I played it probably just as much as Capcom’s classic.

Here’s a video of it in action, from YouTube channel World of Longplays.

That’s it in a nutshell for me. Body Blows was designed around us poor souls with a single fire button, and for all its clunky budget limitations, it was a hell of a lot better than the game struggling to claim it was SFII while suffering the same lack of input options.

It sits in the same charming little zone that T17’s Alien Breed 3D did; it’s clearly rubbish in a direct comparison to its obvious inspiration, but in facing the hardware limitations it takes the game somewhere pretty interesting.

Don’t blame the Amiga for these rip-offs, blame Team17 for making a career of ripping off other games. Besides, Mortal Kombat was a much better SF2 alternative on the amiga than this soulless game. Or you can play the eternal IK+ which was the beast beat em up on the system.

To be fair, unanaesthetized bowel surgery is also better than the Amiga version of Street Fighter 2.

The Amiga saw a bunch of these SF2 knockoffs and they were all more or less terrible, especially compared to their counterparts in console land. Shadow Fighter was the best of the bunch but even it’s not what it’s made out to be.

For some reason, I remember this as having the funniest review ever in the mags at the time (I want to say Zone, but it might have been Gamer). My teenage self thought it was hilarious…all I can remember now is something about one of the characters moving so fast that his sprite had clouds obscuring his lower half, and the caption saying something about how he was so angry he’d bitten his own legs off. Maybe you had to be there (and in your early teens). The internet’s not helping me, but if anyone can find it, I’m ready to laugh again.

Loved it, we used to have knockout tournaments, though banned overpowered characters like Mike and Kossak. I liked Body Blows Galactic too, but the GOG port was impossible to play when I tried last year (can’t remember why, probably a controller issue). It was an Amiga staple, but the loading times between bouts…